Then, ever so slightly, I felt something else. A slight tingling. Angel-fine tendrils of prickly bliss slowly snaking through me, wrapping around me. Exhilarating. Better than any intoxicant I'd ever experienced. Pure life, pure energy.
It was delicious and tantalizing, another dimension of the physical pleasure we stood on the brink of. The fact that it was Seth's was even more alluring. It had his unique essence written all over it. I wanted to dive into it, close my eyes and forget all about being responsible while that sweetness filled me.
But I couldn't. My resolve was weakening by the second, true, but I was still holding on.
Barely.
I broke the kiss reluctantly, trying to muster my strength and move away from him. At the first sign of my struggle, he immediately let me go.
"I - I'm sorry," I said, sitting up and putting my face in my hands. I rubbed my eyes as though waking from a dream, which in a manner of speaking, I was. "We can't. It...it started..."
"Just from kissing."
It was a statement, his voice coming out husky with desire and sleepiness...and regret. He knew better than most how lethal a passionate kiss could be; I'd almost killed him the last time. Of course, that had been an exceptional situation, and my near-death state had sucked away much more than a deep kiss normally would.
"Just from kissing," I repeated bleakly. It didn't take intercourse for one person to give themselves up to another. There were no loopholes in this game.
Tense silence crept in around us until Seth sat up as well and shifted his body away from mine. I could hear genuine pain and guilt when he spoke again. "I'm sorry about that. I don't know...meant to have better control. But I just sort of woke up...and I was half-asleep...and then..."
"I know," I whispered into the darkness. "I know. And I'm sorry too."
More silence.
"I guess," he finally said, "I should go sleep on the couch..."
I closed my eyes, feeling terrible but knowing he was right. We'd been playing with fire by fooling around with this chaste-sleeping thing. It was a wonder something bad hadn't happened sooner. The more it sunk in, the more I realized how much damage I could have caused. Hell, how much damage had I caused already by taking those few drops of life from him? A week off his lifespan? A few days? Even one minute would have been too much.
Bitterness - at the world, not him - dripped from my voice when I spoke. "No. I'll take the couch. We're at your place."
"Whatever. Leave me some remnant of chivalry."
I didn't say anything, and we sat once more in awkward silence. A hundred questions hung in the air between us, but neither of us could broach them. Both our faults. When an emotional situation turned uncomfortable, I had a tendency to run from it or pretend it wasn't happening. And while Seth wouldn't exactly run away, he wouldn't initiate the dialogue needed to explore something like this. So we continued sitting there.
At last, he stood up. "I'm sorry. Sorry for what I did."
He blamed himself, which was typical of him but not fair, especially since I had technically touched him first. I should have said something then, told him it wasn't all his fault. But the words stuck on my tongue, held up by my own confused feelings. After a few more moments, he left for the living room.
I lay back down, Damocles in my arms, but slept badly the rest of the night. When morning came, Seth and I ate breakfast in more tense silence - he'd finally made my pancakes - broken only occasionally by stiff small talk. We then went to the bookstore together, parting ways quickly. I hardly saw him the rest of the day.
Bastien was in the city for some reason or another that night, so he picked me up later and drove me over to his place for the ridiculous heist at Dana's. When I saw the post-sex energy wreathing him, I knew what had brought him downtown.
"Don't you get tired of getting laid every day?" I asked him, wishing I could have gotten laid last night.
"I'm going to pretend you didn't actually just ask that, Fleur ."He then proceeded to ramble on about his various Dana sightings in the last few days, how chummy they were getting, how it could only be a matter of time before the inevitable.
When I didn't really respond, he cut me a sidelong glance. "What's the matter with you? You look miserable."
I sighed. "I kissed Seth last night."
"And?"
"And what?"
"What else happened?"
"Well...nothing. I mean, a little groping here and there, but that's it."
"So?"
"So, I shouldn't have done it."
A dismissive look crossed his face. "A kiss is nothing. It's not like you gave him a blow job or anything."
"Good lord, you're crass."
"Don't act like I offended your delicate sensibilities. And you know what I'm talking about."
"Doesn't matter. I was weak. I got some of his energy from that."
" Fleur , I love you as much as I've ever managed to love anybody, but this whole thing is absurd. You're never going to be happy until you've f**ked this guy, so just get it over with. It'll take away the whole forbidden attraction and allow both of you to get on with your lives. "
"'Get on with our lives?' What's that supposed to mean?" I asked sharply.
"I mean half the reason you guys are so infatuated with each other is because you can't have each other. It's not love, but it is a normal human reaction, a catalyst for physical attraction." He paused and considered. "Your maniacal obsession with his books might also be a factor."
"That's not true. None of that's true at all. Well, I mean, those books are good enough to be the basis of a religion, but that's not the same thing. That's not why I..."
Love him? Hell. I still didn't know if I did or not. I wasn't even sure what love was after all this time.
Bastien shook his head, not believing me but not wanting to argue either. "Fine. Keep going with this. I still think you should f**k him, though. Even if it doesn't make you both realize you're better off apart, it'll at least remove one source of tension between you and maybe let you attempt some sort of normal dysfunctional relationship."
I stared bleakly into space. "I can't. Not even one night. It'd take years off his life. I couldn't live with myself."
"Bah. Only a handful of years at most. What's that? Besides, men have done stupider things for sex - with women they don't even really like. If he really does love you, he might think it's a fair trade."
I shuddered. I didn't think it was fair at all, but he was right about the silly things men would do for sex. I'd seen and initiated plenty of them.
We finally gave up both sides of the argument when we pulled into his driveway. The clock was ticking, and we had to start this operation. Bastien had watched Dana and Bill drive off earlier, and their teenage son had gone down the street to stay at a friend's house. Shifting to be invisible to mortal eyes, Bastien and I crept out the back of his house and scaled the fence into Dana's yard. It sort of made me feel like I was in a spy movie; I half wished we could crawl under some motion-detecting lasers.
"They have a security system," I whispered to Bastien as I watched him pick the back door's lock. More useful skills gleaned from long centuries. "Being invisible isn't going to deactivate it. "
"No problem. I've done some invisible reconnaissance. I know the code."
Sure enough, he punched it into the console once we were in the house, and the readout's red light turned green.
We started in the Dailey office, as that seemed like the most logical place to stash paperwork. Dana had a meticulous sense of organization that creeped me out, and we had to make sure we left everything the way we found it.
Unfortunately, most of the stuff was completely useless. Memos. Efficient - and honest - budget reports. Invoices. Press releases. She had a lot of pictures too, which were at least more fun to look at than the papers. Most of them showed family or CPFV events. A number of the shots had Jody in them, which saddened me. I recalled the other woman's sly wit and passion for art. Why would someone with any sort of intelligence want to get involved in all this?
"I didn't realize how active Jody was in this group," I remarked to Bastien. "She wasn't so bad. Dana's corrupted her."
"Dana's a persuasive woman. Hey, did you know Jody's last name is Daniels? And her husband's name is Jack?"
We giggled over that and continued searching a while longer before finally abandoning the office. We then ransacked - neatly, of course - any other cupboards or drawers we could find on the main floor. Nothing.